The sight of Postal Service carriers delivering at night wearing headlamps is becoming common in some metro Denver neighborhoods, a result of the struggle by the agency to stem severe financial losses, which totaled $5.1 billion in fiscal year 2011, after a loss of $8.5 billion the year before.

“For the most part, all our employees are covering more territory, doing a lot more in a lot less time than they used to,” said U.S. Postal Service spokesman David Rupert.

In the Denver area, carriers who retire or leave are not replaced. Instead, their routes are divided into pieces, which are added to the stops of those still on the job.

Sometimes this is funded by overtime, but mostly the carriers have to cram more deliveries into their eight-hour shifts.

Over the past four years, the USPS has reduced its workforce by 110,000 career employees, according to Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe, who last week predicted a record loss of $14 billion for 2012.

The agency wants to cut another 220,000 jobs by 2015.

Since 2008, the corps of letter carriers in Denver has shrunk 22 percent, to 1,050.

That means 300 fewer carriers are delivering mail to the same number of stops: 489,000 homes and businesses.

Things might soon get a lot more hectic in Denver.

In September, USPS announced sweeping changes aimed at saving up to $3 billion a year, which could include the consolidation or closure of 250 processing facilities.

The plant in Colorado Springs is on the list of possible closures. If it shutters, the work will move to Denver.

“We’re hearing the same message everywhere, that we need to be more efficient,” Rupert said.

For mail carriers such as Ron Churchill, the solution is speed-walking.

On Tuesday, in Denver’s Barnum neighborhood, he made every step count, reading addresses and grouping mail as he walked, cutting across lawns when possible.

When blocked by a fence — or a “Keep Off the Grass” sign — he took the extra steps back down to the sidewalk, over into the next yard and up to the porch.

A guy who loves to walk, he lost 30 pounds in the first 30 days on the job. During the Christmas season, things intensify.

“It’s the same length of the route,” he said, grinning. “More mail, more parcels.”

As the oft-quoted, but unofficial, pledge goes: “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.”

Still, the Postal Service, like most everyone else, would prefer daylight deliveries.

“We want to deliver at the same time each day, and as early as possible,” Rupert said. “I work in a building where all energies are spent on making this happen. It just consumes the guys in operations. They hate it when the mail is delivered late.”

Postal rates for shipping, 1st-class mail increasing

The cash-strapped U.S. Postal Service is raising rates for its more profitable express-mail and priority-mail shipping next year as part of its efforts to stave off bankruptcy. The new prices, effective Jan. 22, amount to an across-the- board increase of roughly 5 percent. They are in addition to a previously announced 1-cent increase in first-class mail to 45 cents, also set for Jan. 22.

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